The new CWA Margery Allingham short story competition received its first entries within a few weeks of being announced. People also began to ask about Margery Allingham's novels. This article is reblogged from the Crime Readers Association website.
Where to begin reading Margery
Allingham?
What an alluring question. How I envy
readers this treat in store ...
To begin at the beginning is usually
sound advice and, with Margery Allingham’s ‘Campion’ novels,
beginning at the beginning offers the additional interest of seeing
how experimental and adventurous she was as a writer. All her Campion novels are
composed within the detective ‘box’ (as she called it) but
there’s a world of difference between the goofy Wodehousian spree
in Mystery Mile (1930) and the intellectual questioning of new
communication methods in The Mind Readers (1965). Both books
are set in deserted stretches of the East Anglian coast line but
there’s more than half a lifetime of imaginative experience and
writerly development in between.
If a chronological approach doesn’t
appeal, then readers can select according to taste. For bright
foolery in rural settings pick Mystery Mile or Sweet Danger
(1934); for greater depth of characterisation and the flavour of a
mid-nineteen-thirties artistic household as well as a plot where
relationships really matter, try Dancers in Mourning (1937).
The novelist A.S. Byatt identified the wartime thriller Traitor’s
Purse (1941) as her personal favourite whereas I hesitate between
the rich eccentricity of More Work for the Undertaker (1948)
and the bleak psychological tension of Hide My Eyes (1958).
Tiger in the Smoke (1952) is
Margery Allingham’s most famous novel. It’s a bold, almost epic
confrontation of good and evil in the choking fog of a post-war,
post-Dickensian London. Tiger in the Smoke removes the central
element of puzzle from the plot – the reader is never in any doubt
whose hand is wielding the knife – but Allingham intensifies the
suspense in a way that anticipates some of the best crime-writing of
today.
Allingham is a detective novelists’
detective novelist. From Agatha Christie to P.D. James and Sara
Paretsky her fellow-writers have praised her style and technique. But
she was also a big personality; warm and witty, intellectually acute
and imaginatively generous. These qualities permeate her fiction and
keep her readers loyal. On reflection I don’t really envy the
readers who are currently poised to discover Allingham. I began
reading the Campions when I was an undergraduate and now, more then
thirty years on, I’m a grandparent and the books have stuck by me
throughout. When I re-visited them recently I discovered two of my
least favourite volumes (naming no names) were far better than I’d
remembered. I think it’s because this series of novels is also the
record of a life. I’ve changed over the years – as we do – so
it’s unsurprising that there are aspects of the mature Allingham
that I read differently as I catch her up in age.
The only advice I can sincerely offer
to new readers is don’t dither for too long. The novelist Jane
Stevenson says that the Margery Allinghams on her bookshelf are the
novels most likely to be filched when weekend guests return home. To
avoid being tempted into such criminous acts hasten to your nearest
bookseller or local library -- or press that electronic button.
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